Certain microbes in the guts of humans and mice may help control plaque buildup in the arteries, a leading cause of cardiovascular disease.
These bacteria work by gobbling up a host of inflammatory chemicals before they can circulate in the body.
New research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and collaborators around the world has identified bacteria capable of breaking down uric acid in a low-oxygen environment in the gut and the specific genes that enable the process. They describe a new way in which our gut microbes can influence our health and a possible way to treat gout or prevent heart disease.
“When your blood is saturated with uric acid, it begins to form crystals that build up in the joints and cause gout,” says Federico Ray, a professor of bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of the new study, which was recently published in Cell Host & Microbe. Before you get enough uric acid to form crystals, even if you have a little more of this uric acid than is normal, it promotes inflammation in your body that is associated with atherosclerosis and plaque buildup in your arteries.”
Professor Ray’s lab partnered with researchers in Sweden who analyzed factors including plaque deposits in the arteries, uric acid levels and microbial communities in the digestive tract in a group of nearly 1,000 people. The amount of uric acid in their bodies was consistent with the amount of fat, cholesterol and other things that calcified their arteries.
“Uric acid levels are also associated with the different types of bacteria present in the gut of these people,” Ray says. “So, we wanted to see if we could identify the types of bacteria associated with low uric acid and see if they were associated with decreased atherosclerosis.”
University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers performed transplants to transfer gut microbes from mature mice to mice born with gut-free gut microbes. Mice that received microbes from artery donors loaded with plaque and higher levels of uric acid in their blood developed the same conditions. In contrast, mice that received microbes from donors with less uric acid and clean arteries developed the same conditions.
The researchers set out to identify the microbes associated with health outcomes, observing which genes were particularly active when the bacteria were grown on uric acid.
“This led us to a set of genes, found across many different bacteria, that are essential for the breakdown of purines and uric acid in the gut,” says Ree. “When these purine-degrading microbes were using uric acid in the gut for their own needs, there was less uric acid in the blood of the mice.” .
Ray would next like to explore whether introducing these purine-eating bacteria to animals with arterial plaque problems could correct cardiovascular disease.
“It’s not a strange bacterium,” Ray adds. “We discovered that these genes needed to break down uric acid were present in microbes that we already had in the lab and could easily grow. It’s too early to say that giving it to people can help them overcome cardiovascular disease or even gout. But we have a new understanding of how the gut microbiome regulates the abundance of this inflammatory compound, which may point the way to new therapies.”
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